Desire
by Ada Kensington
Summary: Sasuke-kun... you will bring me life.


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AN: This is what you get when you listen to Regina Spektor, apparently.

There's a bit of OroSasu nastiness at the end, so tread carefully if you don't think you can take it. It's not too bad, but you can never be certain of tolerance levels on the net. Also, I hate that this site doesn't allow indents or non-breaking spaces. I had a properly nifty format at the end, too, that reflected Oro's madness but the filter ruined it. Whatever, ff . net.

I think that's about it as far as warnings and introductions go, so enjoy, and happy belated birthday Oro! ^_^

* * *

_**Desire**_

_**I.**_

Jiraiya's question came out of nowhere.

"Oro... why don't you like girls?"

They were sitting on the little red wooden bridge down the street from Jiraiya's house – three pairs of feet dangling over the edge, as they watched silver fish dart through the water – sitting there because they had no missions and therefore nothing better to do. As soon the words left Jiraiya's mouth, Tsunade reached over and smacked him hard across the back of the head.

"Idiot!" she yelled. "Stop asking Oro stupid questions!"

"It's not a stupid question!" Jiraiya shouted back. "I just wanna know!"

"It is a stupid question!" Tsunade insisted, taking another swipe at Jiraiya. "Just because you're a creepy pervert and obsessed with girls doesn't mean Oro is!"

"I am not a pervert!"

"You are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"_Am not!"_

"_Are too!"_

Eventually, Sarutobi-sensei arrived and caught Tsunade trying to strangle Jiraiya in a headlock. Life resumed its usual chaotic, rough-and-tumble pace, and Orochimaru forgot he had even been asked, Jiraiya's words flowing freely from his mind like the water and the silver fish passing swiftly under the bridge.

_**II.**_

"Oro... why don't you like girls?"

That question again, though this time whispered and tentative. Obviously, the issue had been bothering Jiraiya, for he had taken a whole week to pluck up the courage to ask again. At least he had not done so in front of Tsunade this time, who was safely out of the way asking Sarutobi-sensei to go over the new _katon_ technique he had introduced them to.

Orochimaru turned to face his team mate and regarded him with a thoughtful expression as he pondered upon this most puzzling problem.

"Should I like girls?" he asked eventually.

Jiraiya nodded, his expression grave, almost comically so.

"Yeah," he scoffed, as though it were the most logical thing in the world. "You're not a proper man if you don't like girls!"

Orochimaru paused for a moment, mulling over this new fact, before half-concluding, half-announcing, "Then I suppose I do like girls."

This answer appeared to please Jiraiya and elicited from him a huge, wicked grin. His dark eyes sparkling with mischief and mirth, he leaned forward – so close Orochimaru could feel Jiraiya's hot breath tickling his ear – and whispered, "You wanna come peeping with me?"

_**III**_.

There was a lake not far from _Shi no Mori_ where girls went to swim – or at least that's what Jiraiya had said, for although Orochimaru had been aware of its existence, he possessed no knowledge whatsoever of what seemed to be its true purpose. He had never needed to know before now.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled apart the leaves of the bush he was hiding in and peered through the widened gap. The sight that greeted him made his eyes widen in shock. There were women bathing in the lake. Three of them. And they were completely naked.

Curious, Orochimaru tilted his head to one side and regarded them. After all, that was what he was here to do. He noted that they all shared the same dark hair and eyes and certain features in common: their noses slightly long; their faces round; their figures slender, yet pear-shaped. Their breasts – a novelty for Orochimaru, who had never before seen a naked woman – were small with pert, dark nipples, glistening with beads of water as the women splashed and frolicked. They must be sisters, he thought, and this he told Jiraiya.

"Whoa, you're right!" Jiraiya whispered, rubbing his hands together with glee. "You're lucky I picked today. We've hit the jackpot!"

Orochimaru wondered vaguely why Jiraiya hadn't noticed, since to him it was painfully obvious they were sisters, but he chalked it up to Jiraiya being stupid as usual and went back to watching the women bathe.

By the time the sisters left the lake, Orochimaru had seen everything the waist-high water had hitherto obscured, and when the coast was clear, he emerged from their hiding place, looking thoughtful and wondering what he was supposed to have gained from the experience. He did not feel any different. If anything, he was bored and sore from crouching too long in a cramped hideaway.

"Was that good or what?" Jiraiya said, grinning, clapping him on the back.

He did not answer.

_**IV.**_

He could not remember much from the time his parents died.

Actually, it was not so much that he could not remember anything as that the _specifics_ were lacking. He knew where he was when he had been told (in the classroom) but not what he had been doing. He knew that a pair of Chuunin had taken him out of the room to deliver the news, but could not remember who exactly (though by now they were probably dead too.) He knew that he had been given the rest of the day off, but could not remember what he had done with himself (he had no other relatives and nowhere to go but home to an empty house.)

All he knew for certain was that he had not cried, and he remembered thinking then that something was wrong with him. After all, Tsunade had said, admonishing him, you were supposed to cry when something sad happened to you.

Standing beside his parents' grave, he thought about this and wondered.

Then he turned to Sarutobi, who was standing a respectful few paces behind, and said, "Is there something wrong with me?"

"What do you mean, Orochimaru?" his sensei asked, eyebrows raised. "Is something troubling you?"

He hesitated before replying, feeling hot and uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"I didn't cry when my parents died," Orochimaru said, quietly. "And Jiraiya thinks I'm weird for not liking girls. Is there something wrong with me?"

Smiling, Sarutobi knelt down on the grass beside him and placed a reassuring hand upon his shoulder.

"You were young when your mother and father passed away, and you are young yet, Orochimaru. Take no notice of Jiraiya. You have plenty of time to worry about girls. Enjoy your childhood while it lasts because – and this is between you and me – women cause us men no end of trouble."

"Even you?" Orochimaru said, shocked.

"Even me," Sarutobi laughed.

His sensei was fallible.

The thought made him smile.

_**V.**_

The day he found the white snake was the day he was irrevocably changed.

He would no longer accept death.

When Jiraiya teased him and called him a freak during training later on, he pinned him to a tree with a kunai and punched him so hard his knuckles bled and Jiraiya had to be taken to hospital to get stitches. He was pretending to be a snake at the time, and snakes were fast – faster than the fat frogs Jiraiya loved to watch that plopped and gurgled in fetid ponds. Even so, Orochimaru shocked himself with his own speed. Sarutobi had not seen it coming, since violence usually erupted from Tsunade's corner, and he was not quick enough to stop it.

When his sensei asked him why he had hurt Jiraiya, Orochimaru shrugged and said, "I was tired of him teasing me. Now he won't tease me again."

Of course, these things were no longer important, but how could he stop a force as great as death itself if he could not stop the baseless accusations of an idiot ten year old. But he _had_ stopped them, and he knew then that he had the power to end other things as well, if he wanted.

He didn't have to punch Jiraiya. He could've used the kunai...

_**VI.**_

He had his first orgasm when he was fifteen years old – and he would never forget it.

By that time it had been more or less accepted by his team mates that he had not, nor ever would, develop an interest in the opposite sex. He was not like Jiraiya, who bragged about touching himself at night, bringing fleeting moments of pleasure with furtive, clumsy movements under moonlight. He did not touch himself. He did not much see the point.

Orochimaru preferred his books, the laboratories, the dusty old scrolls kept away under lock and key which Sarutobi always let him read if he pleaded, giving into the persistence of his favourite student with a rueful smile. Orochimaru preferred ideas to women, and he was suspicious that Jiraiya, too, preferred ideas to women. Or at least he preferred the idea of what women should be, as opposed to the reality of what they truly were. For he professed to be a great lover of the fairer sex, extolling their virtues _ad nauseum_ in an endless chattering cycle, yet sulked and complained when he was rejected by any of the village girls.

While waiting on the red bridge for Tsunade to show, Orochimaru slyly put forward his theory to Jiraiya – that he, too, preferred ideas. Jiraiya's response was as expected: a raised eyebrow, a scornful snort, and the complete bypassing of what was the heart of the matter.

"What, you think because I complain about them that I don't like women?" he said. "It's not because I don't like them. I love them! I'm just impatient, that's all!"

Curious, Orochimaru inquired as to what he was waiting for, then wished he'd never asked.

"I'm this close!" Jiraiya whispered, his face alight with eagerness. "This close, Oro! There's this one girl I'm gonna get lucky with – I know it! She says she likes me because I make her laugh. I've seen her boobs loads of times, and the other night, she let me finger her, though it wasn't for long because she said I wasn't doing it right."

"This month, Oro," he went on proudly, grinning from ear to ear, "or maybe even next week – because I'm gonna go see her on Wednesday – I'll be a man. I'll have had sex finally, and it's gonna be great!"

Jiraiya's big day, however, did not go off as planned. The Second Great Shinobi War was at its height, and as newly promoted jounin they were locked in a continual, bloody cycle of missions. An important tactical vantage point had been secured just outside Amegakure not long prior. The rain village was bitterly divided by civil war, and it was unfortunate for Konoha that this particular town remained loyal to the establishment. The locals had rebelled, and Orochimaru's team – and others – were sent to quell their insurrection.

The insurgents were waiting for them when they arrived. Negotiations quickly broke down and ended in a confusing, brutal, pitched battle, fought knee-deep in mud and in the middle of a terrible storm.

Visibility was next to zero. That was probably why Orochimaru did not notice the chakra threads until they wrapped around his neck – once, twice, three times – and tugged so violently he was dragged under the mud. The pressure on his throat was immense, and a thick layer of cold, slick mud covered his eyes and nose and sucked him into the earth. Despite this, he laughed to himself and prepared to make the hand seals that would release him from restraint and end the life of the one who hoped in vain to kill him.

When he found he could not make seals because his attacker had restrained his hands, he was not overly concerned, and began to pass phasing chakra through his body in preparation for _hiru-issai-soushi no jutsu_, his own creation, that would leech his being into the soft earth, enabling him to escape.

He panicked when he realised the chakra threads were keeping him bound to his corporeal form.

For the first time in his life, Orochimaru felt a flicker of fear.

With a jerk from above, the pressure from the threads increased, tightening, torturing. His head felt hot and heavy and he couldn't think clearly. He couldn't see and no one could see him. He couldn't move his arms. He couldn't breathe. All he could think about was that he couldn't breathe. He could feel every laboured beat of his heart as it strained to pump blood around his veins, to take oxygen to his brain, without which he would most certainly die.

While the battle raged on overhead, under a thick layer of mud, Orochimaru began to suffocate.

Every muscle in his body was rigid, painfully rigid, wound so tight he thought they would snap. The pressure around his neck increased still further and he felt it build, too, behind his eyes. Before long, there was an explosion of pain in his skull, and he cried out reflexively, though no sound escaped. The tension, the pressure, was unbearable. It was so, so painful. He wanted nothing more than release. Nothing more.

And then it came.

The pain became agony, the tension an unbearable strain, and just at the point those forces combined to culminate in what he thought was their excruciating zenith... something rather strange happened.

A tingling all over, followed by a sudden and overwhelming hot rush of euphoria that pulsed through his body in rhythmic waves, like concentric circles, like ripples in water, so strong he could not have suppressed them even if he had wanted to – an all-consuming tide of pleasure that washed his mind clear of all thought, of all awareness of who and where he was, leaving him a dumb, blissfully convulsing piece of meat.

It was ecstasy.

A crunching pain in his leg momentarily distracted him, and something heavy fell beside him. Then, through the mud plunged a strong hand, grasping him by the forearm and hauling him up unexpectedly with a wet, sucking sound. He could do nothing but comply, not having the strength to resist. His body was still in thrall, still numbed by intensifying waves of pleasure. Jiraiya's terrified, blood-stained face was the first thing he saw when he emerged into the open air, and as Orochimaru looked into his team mate's eyes he finally released. Gasping for breath, with wide, blood-shot eyes, he let out a low, shuddering moan before he collapsed to the ground and lost consciousness.

The last thing he felt before darkness took him was terror, because he realised then that death could be beautiful.

_**VII.**_

He woke up in the Infirmary the next day in a grey room in a cold bed. Outside, it was overcast and raining heavily.

Tsunade and Sarutobi were sitting by his bedside. Jiraiya, however, was nowhere to be found, and when Orochimaru inquired as to his whereabouts, Sarutobi replied that he was on a mission and would be back shortly.

Not long after, Jiraiya did turn up and took Tsunade's vacated seat. At first, he seemed normal, chatting about matters crude and inconsequential, going over the battle in Amegakure which had been won by Konoha in the end – embellishing the truth wherever the opportunity arose. But Orochimaru knew him better than anyone. There was something wrong. As Jiraiya spoke, he would not look him in the eye.

The next day, he asked Tsunade when she came to visit, but she would not yield the information he desired. Of course, he pressed her until she provided.

Apparently, when Jiraiya had found him, half-strangled and at the point of death on the battlefield, he'd had an erection and managed to come all over himself before collapsing in an insensate heap on the ground. They'd had to abandon the fight to transport him to safety before heading back to finish the job. Hypoxic euphoria, she said, telling him all this calmly, with perfect candour, and only the barest hint of a smirk on her lips.

But Orochimaru saw it. He knew her better than anyone. He saw the smirk and he knew exactly what it meant.

The humiliation stung him, but what was worse was the painful, bitter reminder of his fallibility, of his humanity – that he would have accepted his fate in its beautiful disguise.

But no longer.

He had tasted death. He had seen it and knew it for what it was. He would not let it debase him, taunt him, humiliate him ever again.

"_I refuse..."_ he whispered to himself in the dark, unaware of the blood seeping from his palms, the soft flesh torn by nails digging into tightly clenched fists.

_**VIII.**_

Years passed, yet the shadow of death's spectre never truly left him. It was always there, hovering over his shoulder like a wraith, snatching at random and taking the lives of those around him. It did not even spare the living; those who had loved and lost changed forever by its capricious whim. Tsunade was never the same after losing Nawaki and Dan, and their deaths marked the beginning of the end of the Legendary Sannin (a dubious accolade forced upon them in a moment of stalemate by Hanzou the Salamander in an arrogant, grudging recognition of their talent.)

War took its toll, and the three drifted apart, pursuing their own unique ways of deadening the pain. Tsunade drank and gambled. Jiraiya drank and chased women. Orochimaru, however, eschewed the shinobi vices altogether – not wishing to become a cliché – and instead opted for something far more practical.

_The body of the chuunin stretched out on the slab in front of him twitched and spasmed..._

People thought he was out of sorts because the third had not chosen him to become Hokage. Behind his back (always behind his back, for they would not dare do it to his face) they laughed and called him a poor loser. If they had known the secrets he had uncovered during his illicit late-night sojourns poring over Konoha's Forbidden Scrolls, they would not have judged him in such terms.

_A scream cut through the air as his scalpel sliced through skin and bone..._

He did not need to become Hokage. He had never wanted to become Hokage. The title, the job, the power and the privilege were not important – least appealing of all, to be bound to a perpetual cycle of paperwork and diplomacy. No. There was something _far_ more important, more noble and far-reaching than attaining the position of glorified administrator and war-monger.

_Other test subjects were chained to the walls, bodies chatting rhythmically, telling of twisted tendons and torn flesh – and though weak with torment, still they struggled against their chains. Their sheer will to live made Orochimaru's heart sing..._

Let Namikaze Minato have it.

He was close. So, so close...

When the door burst open seconds later and Sarutobi stormed inside, the look of horror and betrayal on the old man's face made him laugh until he was sick. Jiraiya took it badly too, chasing him all the way to the borders of Konoha until he realised Orochimaru was fully prepared to kill him should he stand in his way. He left Jiraiya on his knees, in tears, calling his name, pleading with him to return.

He did not.

_**IX.**_

The day he became immortal was the day he was irrevocably changed.

He would no longer accept death.

When the ritual was complete, the first thing he asked for was a mirror. Eager to please and staring at his beloved master with awe and adoration, Kimimaro provided, his normally moon-pale hair glittering like burnished gold in the dim, flickering torchlight.

"Orochimaru-sama," his young, solemn charge offered with a shy smile, "you look beautiful."

But Orochimaru silenced him with an impatient gesture. He wanted to see for himself, and snatched up the mirror with eager hands (his hands now, hard as it was to believe).

He beheld himself in the looking-glass: a stranger's face with his own eyes staring back at him, blood seeping from the lower lids and trickling down pale cheeks that were and were not his own. His heart began to race, and he felt giddy with accomplishment, wanting nothing more than to throw his head back and laugh with abandon.

The ritual was a success. He had done it. He had conquered death and gained everything he had ever desired.

And Kimimaro was right.

It was beautiful.

_**X.**_

There were certain unforeseen side-effects to the transmigration ritual that, over the course of years, made themselves apparent to its creator. For all that his parasitic, invasive spirit would force itself upon his unfortunate vessels – crushing their thoughts and desires under the weight of his own and driving their being into a somnolent darkness – his will was not all-consuming. The very act of taking the body of another, of suppressing their conscious and replacing it with his own, meant that the mind of the vessel was just that. Not gone, but suppressed.

When he took his first body (a young man from the Hidden Grass he had long had his eye on, given to him by the village as payment for services rendered) he found that he developed sudden likings for foods that had hitherto seemed to him disgusting. Most puzzling, though, was his uncanny knowledge of unfamiliar foods, those he knew with certainty he had not tried but knew with equal certainty that he either liked or did not like them. It was passing strange, and Kabuto had been on the brink of carrying out an extensive examination in order to discover the origin of his master's false memories, when the answer came to him like a bolt from the blue.

The memories were not false at all. They belonged to his vessel.

The revelation amused him, and he began to delight in anticipating what the next poor thing would bring to him of themselves.

When he took his second body (the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the Daimyo of the impoverished Rice Country), he was not at all perturbed to find himself humming snatches of unfamiliar songs as he handed Kabuto a bloody retractor in the laboratory. Likewise, he was undisturbed when he began to take greater pride in his appearance, ordering a beautiful kimono made for himself of the finest materials he could purchase with the considerable wealth he had accrued. When the garment was finished, the tailors came to him, bowing and scraping, heads touching the ground, and they dressed him, and he stood in front of the mirror and gazed upon himself in all his finery and he threw back his head and laughed until he felt madness but a inch from claiming him.

His third body, his current vessel, was more troubling. The circumstances of his acquiring young Gen'yumaru had not been favourable and he had therefore not been able to enjoy the lazy luxury of speculating upon the eccentricities of his next host. Bedridden and wracked in the throes of agony, his lifeless arms cracked and rotten and cursed by his dying sensei to remain forever useless, he craved only release from his torment – release that only his next container could provide.

Uchiha Sasuke, the beautiful, proud and vulnerable Uchiha fledgling with his grace, his talent, his strength and his keen eyes, his blood-red Sharingan.

Oh how he wanted him...

But the Uchiha was late, did not arrive in time, and Orochimaru was forced to take an inferior host. When alone and ruing his ill-fortune, he often recalled Gen'yumaru's last moments. In memory, he saw himself waiting outside the gloomy, cave-like room in which the boy had been imprisoned, heard him shouting, his voice demanding, insistent, uncompromising.

"_Hey! You said you'd let me out, right? You'd better keep your promise! What are you doing? Hurry up and open the gate!"_

He remembered smiling at the stubborn tenacity in the young man's tone, remembered laughing when the boy's face melted from arrogance into abject terror when he realised the identity of the one who appeared before him.

"Your strong will will remain in my subconscious," he had said to the boy. "Do not worry. You will not lose everything."

And he had not.

It did not begin right away, as it had with the others. Gen'yumaru's desire crept up on him by degrees. It was insidious and invasive, slowly worming its way into his consciousness, entangling itself with Orochimaru's own appetites and desires until one day they had become inextricably bound and he no longer knew where his host's began and his own ended.

It was troubling, for it was an entirely different sort of desire from that to which he was accustomed – wholly dissimilar to his lofty ideals, his science and his grand goals. It was a young man's desire: instinctive, feral, a hot tugging-at-the-guts carnality that was at once alien and entirely familiar, one that made him dream dark, rushing dreams of windswept mud-plains and snakes and sisters with long noses and perfect breasts – and Sasuke. Always Sasuke, for the boy was everything that he could ever want and was therefore the living embodiment of his desire.

That night, he had awoken with a shuddering jerk, having dreamt once again of Sasuke, to find that his hands – Gen'yumaru's hands – had betrayed him. Oblivious and deep in sleep, he had been touching himself in the dark, just as Jiraiya had done all those years ago. His groin felt tight and heavy, and for a long time he lay there, gripping fistfuls of his bed sheets and willing the feeling to go away.

When it did not, he knew that something in him had changed.

He therefore made his decision accordingly.

Without hesitation, he stretched and reached over his head to tap the button that would call for Kabuto. Within moments, the door to his inner chamber creaked open and Yakushi Kabuto appeared – able and discreet. With his silent footfalls and silvery hair and nightclothes, his physician could have been mistaken for a wraith, but then there had always been something of the uncanny about Kabuto...

"Orochimaru-sama?" he heard him inquire. His servant's voice showed no signs of sleepiness and his dark eyes were alert. "Is there anything wrong?"

"Sasuke..." he said, his voice ringing out, curt and cold, in the flickering gloom. "Bring him to me."

Unquestioning, Kabuto nodded and backed out of the room without another word, closing the door quietly behind him.

Alone, Orochimaru rose and pulled on a loose robe kept folded upon a trunk at the bottom of his bed, tied it around his waist, and waited. His patience was not unduly tested, for not long after, there was a quiet knock at the door.

"Enter."

The door opened and Sasuke appeared, his eyes puffy and sore from lack of sleep and his hair in disarray. He wore black shorts, a t-shirt and a scowl. Behind him, Orochimaru heard a faint rustle of fabric, and the hesitant quality of the sound betrayed Kabuto's presence – still hovering behind the Uchiha, no doubt. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk.

"Kabuto," he called out. "Leave us."

The door was obediently closed and his young apprentice stood but a few feet away from him, eyeing him warily. It appeared the boy had only just realised where Kabuto had taken him: into the den of the great snake, who sat at the end of his bed and watched him with unnatural, yellow eyes. Of course, Orochimaru spoke first. Around Sasuke, he always spoke first.

"Come here, Sasuke-kun," he said, indicating an empty spot upon the bed.

"Why?"

"Do you defy me?"

There was a moment's silence before he was afforded Sasuke's guarded reply.

"... yes."

He felt a momentary twist of anger that must have flashed across his face, as the boy's eyes widened momentarily, but he suppressed it, and said sweetly, dangerously, "Why do you defy me, Sasuke-kun?"

"Why did you wake me up and call me here at two in the morning? From the way you're dressed, I don't expect it's anything to do with training."

At Sasuke's insolence, the anger flared again, and there was an edge to his voice it had not hitherto possessed. His vessel's desire flowed through his veins; like potent alcohol, it burned and intoxicated.

"I asked you a question, student mine, and I expect you to answer."

Out of the blue, from the depths of his mind, a memory came to him and made itself known.

"_What, you think because I complain about them that I don't like women? It's not because I don't like them. I love them! I'm just impatient, that's all!"_

Suddenly, he understood Jiraiya's impatience. His eyes wandered over Sasuke's perfect form. Always in his mind was the thought that that perfect form would be his soon enough...

"Then I don't like the way you're looking at me, the way you've been looking at me ever since I came here," Sasuke bit back. "I don't know why you had Kabuto drag me out of bed. It's cold, I'm tired and I don't even know what I'm doing here, so if you've got nothing else to say to me, then I'm go—"

Orochimaru was on his feet in a flash and closed the distance between them faster than his apprentice could comprehend. The boy's proud words died in his throat as Orochimaru's fist shot out, grabbing a handful of his hair, and forced him against the wall, eliciting a shocked hiss of pain as he twisted Sasuke's arm behind his back. As he pressed the length of his body against Sasuke, he could feel the heat burning in what little space there was between them and felt a thrill of anticipation. The boy began to struggle, to no avail.

"What are you doing? Are you mad! Let me go!"

Leaning forward, no longer able to suppress the cruel smile that played around the corners of his mouth, he whispered in Sasuke's ear.

"You must understand, Sasuke-kun, that this is not my desire. It is my vessel's. When I take a new body, part of them remains in me, and it seems as though young Gen'yumaru's interest in the pleasures of the flesh was stronger than most." His free hand began to wander up toward the crook between Sasuke's neck and shoulder, hovering a moment over the cursed seal he had placed there. His smile grew wider.

"It should not feel too much an intrusion," he continued, his voice smooth like honey-sweetened wine, "for you already bear the mark of heaven, and you already know how it feels to have a part of me residing within you.

"Think of it as training," he added, as he dug his nails deep into the cursed seal and elicited a scream of pain from his student. "For, after all, I will be taking your body in the end. I wonder, Sasuke-kun, what you will bring to me of yourself? I suppose I am about to find out."

He took him then and there in his chambers; his beautiful, perfect Sasuke-kun up against the wall, one of the boy's hands twisted behind his back and the other splayed against the cold stone, scratching and clawing at it as he gritted his teeth against the pain – for Orochimaru was not gentle. As he took him and began to lose himself in Gen'yumaru's wanton ardor, ignoring entirely the boy's stifled cries, he allowed himself the luxury of speculation.

_What will you bring to me, Sasuke?_

Of course, he already knew.

He would bring him everything he had ever wanted. He would bring him knowledge. He would bring him power. He would bring him beauty.

He would make him perfect.

The thought of what he would become fanned the flames of his desire and his movements became more urgent and more forceful until Sasuke's pride was unable to mask his pain and his hoarse cries rung with hatred and despair.

_You will bring me everything I have ever wanted. You will make me perfect. _

And then it came upon him suddenly – a feeling he had not felt in a long time. Rhythmic waves of pleasure. Like ripples in water. Euphoria. Ecstacy. All-consuming bliss. A brief flash of memory in which he recalled wind-swept mud-plains and the terror of staring death in the face and finding it to be painfully, incomprehensibly beautiful. He gazed upon Uchiha Sasuke, his next vessel, his future, and his climax intensified when he realised what it all meant.

_Sasuke-kun... _

_You will bring me life._

Release came and overtook him, leaving him insensate and quivering with a fierce joy he never thought he could attain. Sasuke lay collapsed on the floor, curled in on himself, his breathing harsh and ragged as he choked out again and again through unshed tears that he hated him, hated him, hated him. But Orochimaru ignored the boy, and instead staggered over to his bed and felt himself fall down upon it, smiling, and let happiness and contentment fill every part of his being.

This time there was no terror. For it was not death that had appeared before him, but life eternal. His fallibility, his humanity, everything that had held him back had fallen away, and what lay before him now – only a glittering vision of infinite possibility.

"_Oro... why don't you like girls?"_

"_I'm just impatient, that's all!"_

"_No end of trouble..."_

"_Orochimaru-sama, you look beautiful."_

_ "I refuse... I refuse!"_

"_Is there anything wrong?"_

_ Close... So, so close..._

"_What are you doing? Hurry up and open the gate!"_

Uchiha Sasuke.

He would bring him life.


End file.
